Tuesday, March 8, 2011

A Taste of the Tropics

March is plodding along, so a friend and I got a taste of the tropics a few days ago at the annual open house at Orchids by Hausermann in Villa Park. Wow!! I'll be the first to tell you that I'm not a huge orchid fan. I love the unusual ones, not the cattleyas nor the phalaenopsis that you see everywhere. I've killed a couple that I bought on a whim at the orchid show at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I don't do well with fussy plants.

That is a lot of phalaenopsis, my friends.

However, put me in acres of greenhouses in March and I think it goes to my head. I came home with a gardenia and a paphiopedilum. Now that I have a sunny window, we'll see if I kill these. The gardenia is a sentimental plant for me. I had one in a corsage for a high school dance and somehow managed to keep one alive and blooming in my college dorm room. We'll see what happens with this one. The paph is a lady slipper-type orchid. I have instructions. I have promised it I will try very hard not to kill it. So far the cats are not eating them, so here's hoping for survival!

All those plastic bottles hold hundreds of thousands of tiny baby orchids